Chennai Super Kings captain MS Dhoni confirms that he will return to play one more season next year in the Indian Premier League. While speaking in the post-match interview, Dhoni first expressed that he was contemplating retirement but then made an U-turn stating he owes it to the fans for making the effort to come back for one more year.
While speaking to Harsha Bhogle in the post-match interview, Dhoni said, " If you circumstantially if you see it's the best time to announce the retirement. The easy thing for me to say is thank you and retire. But the hard thing to do is to work hard for nine months and try to play one more IPL season. The body has to hold up. But the amount of love I have received from CSK fans, it would be a gift for them to play one more season. The way they've shown their love and emotion, it's something I need to do for them. It's the last part of my career. It started over here and the full house was chanting my name. It was my same thing in Chennai, but it will be good to come back and play whatever I can. The kind of cricket I play, they feel they can play that cricket. There's nothing orthodox about it and I like to keep it simple."
Further talking about how he approaches the IPL, Dhoni spoke about how each tournament has its own challenge and expressed that it is important to allow individuals to take responsibility. He then deemed the 2023 season as a special to conclude his interview.
He said, "I think every trophy or bilateral series you win, it has its own challenges. When it comes to the crunch, you need to have your individuals ready. The amount of pressure every individual can deal with is different. We tried to do that. Ajinkya [Rahane] is experienced, but if they [youngsters] are confused we chat with them."